By A. O. SCOTT

January 10, 2013

For the past few years, the Oscars have been haunted by the fear that the pictures, to paraphrase Norma Desmond, had gotten small. Or at least that the kind of pictures worthy of Academy Awards no longer operated at a scale demanded by a worldwide broadcast. The box office numbers of best picture nominees seemed to be shrinking as the movie business split in two. At one end was a specialized boutique outfit, at the other a franchise factory geared to the international mass market. Between those poles was a hole where the serious mainstream movies used to be.

Some time in the past decade or so, the argument goes, Hollywood abandoned the grown-up audience, preferring to chase after adolescent eyeballs with fantasy blockbusters and lowbrow genre fare. Or maybe the discerning public, seduced by cable television and distracted by the Internet, gave up on moviegoing, leaving the multiplexes to the teenage mutant vampire hordes. In any case, the idea that American cinema could define and ennoble the broad middle ground of the culture — a magical place where art intersects with commerce and popularity coexists with prestige — is as dead as the old studio system.

Don’t believe it. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciencesannounced its nominees Thursday, it dealt a blow to this conventional wisdom. Whether ambitious mainstream moviemaking has been granted a new, long-term lease on life remains to be seen. But the Academy’s choices confirmed that 2012 was not just a strong year for movies, but also for precisely the kind of movies that are supposed to be nearly obsolete.

Look at the list of leading nominees — “Lincoln” and “Argo,”“Zero Dark Thirty” and “Les Misérables,”“Silver Linings Playbook” and “Amour,”“Life of Pi” and “Django Unchained” — and you will find a dizzying diversity of themes and styles. You may also notice a lot of big-studio releases without a superhero in sight. And, perhaps most remarkably, you will find movies that have already sparked passionate arguments and sold a lot of tickets. It would be hard to say the same about the last two best picture winners, “The Artist” and “The King’s Speech.” Both were charming, nostalgic trifles, and though “The King’s Speech” made a lot of money, it was too safe — too small — to make anybody angry.

Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” leading the pack this year with 12 nominations, is an almost too-perfect example of the kind of movie they supposedly don’t make anymore. Shot on actual film stock in somber light, it tackles weighty historical issues with a blend of gravity and exuberant theatricality that would have done the old moguls proud. But it is much more than a musty period drama, or a puffed-up, dumbed-down history lesson.

Released after a notably contentious election, “Lincoln” has proved that the public’s appetite for political battle extends beyond cable news, and that our fascination with the great leaders of the past is not confined to the nonfiction best-seller lists. The movie is entertaining enough to be a hit — its domestic grosses are currently approaching $150 million — and provocative enough to incite debate among historians and Op-Ed columnists. This kind of crossover seems to be more the rule than the exception. Ben Affleck’s “Argo” revisits the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-80 at a time of tension and turmoil in the Middle East, turning geopolitical trouble into a witty and suspenseful thriller (and earning more than $100 million at the North American box office). Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” — an episodic reconstruction of the C.I.A.’s pursuit of Al Qaeda, from the Sept. 11 attacks to the killing of Osama bin Laden — is not yet in wide release, but it has already attracted ardent critical support and equally ardent dissent from those who believe that it distorts the record on the effectiveness of waterboarding and other forms of harsh interrogation.

Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” an extremely bloody, extremely funny revenge fantasy about a former slave in the antebellum South, has stirred up a hornet’s nest because of its extreme violence and inflammatory language. But at the same time, it has pushed audiences to reckon with a legacy of brutality and racism that Hollywood has historically ignored, and to think about how contemporary popular culture can and should address the horrors of the past. It has also taken in more than $112 million domestically since it opened on Christmas Day.

Money, of course, is not a measure of quality, any more than media controversy is an index of importance. Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” a Cannes prizewinner from Austria that broke out of the best foreign film category to earn four other nominations (best picture, best original screenplay, best actress and best director) is not likely to break box office records, or to become fodder for ideological disputation. But is surely one of the best pictures of the year, a meticulous and harrowing examination of the end of life, and as such the very definition of a serious movie, especially if you take seriousness to be synonymous with unrelenting grimness.

Perhaps for that reason I’m a little surprised that the Academy showed “Amour” so much love, but maybe I shouldn’t be. What strikes me about this year’s Oscar nominees is how many of them invite, or even force, their viewers to think, and making thinking part of the pleasure they offer. This is not to say that these films are difficult or cerebral.

There are plenty of visceral jolts to be found in “Argo,” “Django Unchained” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” gasps of amazement in “Life of Pi,” tremors of terror in “Amour,” explosions of laughter in “Silver Linings Playbook” and tears in “Lincoln” and “Les Misérables.” In other words they try, with varying degrees of success, to provide the range of emotions and sensations that have always been a big reason that people go to the movies. Even grown-ups.